Oster BLSTPB-WBL My Blend 250-Watt Blender with Travel Sport Bottle, Light Powder Blue

Very impressive blender. It was well made, very useful, and excellently priced.

I have been using this personal blender every day since I received it two weeks ago. I wanted a personal-size blender that’s easy to clean compared to the large regular-size blenders. I use it for smoothies with juice, fresh fruit, frozen fruit, and ice cubes.The operation is easy - put your ingredients in the bottle, put the blade cover on real tight, turn it upside down, place it on the motor, then turn it about 1” and the motor kicks in. When you turn it, the bottle locks in which means you can let go of the bottle. I let it whirl for 20-30 seconds. Remove the bottle, turn it rightside up, remove the blade cover, and screw on the drinking cover.It crushes the ice cubes into slush after 20 seconds. After 30 seconds everything is frothy.I usually drink straight from the bottle. The bottle is too tall to use a normal length straw so if I really want to use a straw, then I pour it into a glass.Condensation forms on the outside of the bottle. I use a coozie to keep my hands dry and to prevent a puddle from forming on the table. The bottle with the coozie fit into my vehicle’s cup holder.I don’t have much counter space, so after each use I put it away in the cabinet. It’s lightweight and small enough for me to do this every day.The instructions were easy to follow and the box itself contained a recipe for a smoothie and another for a shake.I like that it converts the ice into slush, only takes 20 seconds, easy clean up, and it’s a fun way to eat fruit!

EDIT: 5 years later! Still going strong!This is just what I needed! It was pretty annoying having to use and then clean a full sized blender when I was only making a single portion of smoothie. This takes up significantly less space and makes making a single serving a breeze. It doesn't have any buttons, all you do is line it up, and then twist to make it blend, so you do need to be holding it while it blends. Since you're making so little though, it's not really annoying at all. I love being able to twist, blend, take it off the blender, shake it a few times and then put it back on, lets me get a nice even blend.I've read all the reviews here, and it seems like the best way to increase the lifespan of this blender is to realize its limits. It's not going to make super thick, milkshake consistency smoothies. It probably won't be able to handle huge chunks of frozen fruit. But if you give it a break and cut your fruit pretty small before freezing it, then it blends perfectly. I slice my bananas pretty thin and then freeze them, maybe just half inch slices or so- and it handles them with no issues. But I think a whole frozen strawberry would be too much for it.Another thing I read in the reviews is to never let it run too long at once. If you take my advice and make your frozen fruit thin and easy to handle, this won't be an issue. But if you use huge chunks and keep it running it will burn out this poor little blender pretty dang fast. It's a small blender with a small engine, be easy on it.Another thing I read is that it's best to, when done blending, unplug the machine before taking the cup off the blending engine. So you put it on the blender, twist, let it blend, unplug, take it off the blender. This means the engine isn't fighting you to keep the blades spinning, giving it a little more lifespan.It's a blender, so it makes blender noises, but I don't consider it loud. Since it blends pretty fast (if you take my advice above) it shouldn't bother anyone in the morning. And if you have multiple people who like smoothies, you can buy multiple cups (in multiple colors!) so everyone can have their own. That's amazing. They don't have to clean out a huge clunky blender container just so they can have whatever smoothie THEY want.Personally, I don't drink from the cup lid supplied, I just take it off and sip, or use a straw. It's mostly there to keep everything in. And the picture is a little weird, the lid goes where the blades are, so the bottle itself only has one opening. Don't know why they have the lid on top like that.Overall, it's a great little blender. Would recommend if you have kids and you want them to eat healthier. It's pretty safe, since you can't reach your hand into the blades while it's blending. Teach them the limits of the machine and it'll work great for them.My go to smoothie is frozen banana, almond milk, peanut butter and cocoa powder. Makes a nice, slightly sweet but not too sweet smoothie that rounds out at about 300 calories at most. Gives you things like potassium, iron, and protein, so it's a nice beginner smoothie for people who aren't a huge fan of fruit, like myself.If this blender dies on me, I'll get back to you with how long it lasted with the measures I have taken. Hope this review was useful to someone!

UPDATE: I'm changing my review from 5 stars to 4 stars because the pieces of kale don't get particularly small and I have to chew them. Otherwise, everything I wrote before stands, especially if you are making protein powder smoothies.This is one of those products that seriously makes my life better. I am just starting with protein shakes and those shaker bottle products do not come close to cutting it for me. I was shocked at how much better just plain powder + water shakes are with this blender. I was also surprised how well it blends frozen berries, possibly better than my full size blender. Even though I am just starting with the protein shakes, I frequently made green smoothies with a full size blender but didn't like several aspects of how cumbersome that was.I was really confused about how it works before I bought it though. I realized that's because the picture is nonsense. It will never look like that on the blender. The lid and the piece that have the blades are interchangeable. What you do is fill the bottle, then put on the piece with the blades on top, turn it over, blend it, remove the bottle from the blender, turn it back over, take off the piece with the blades, and replace it with the actual lid. So when the bottle is on the blender it is upside down. The process seems like a lot of steps but it is super easy. If it helps it to make sense, when the bottle is on the blender, it will just be the bottom of the bottle on top where the lid shows in the picture. I guess they just want to show what the lid looks like on the bottle.It solves many problems of traditional blenders for smoothies. 1) Because you mix it directly into the bottle, you do not lose all the smoothie that would stick to the sides of a regular blender when you pour it into a cup. 2) You can get extra bottles so if you only run your dishwasher every couple of days, you can just get a couple more bottles so you always have a clean one. The extras are cheap and worth it. 3) It takes up substantially less room on the counter. 4) There are not a bunch of settings you have to choose between. 5) It does a really good job of blending smoothies because that's what it's made for. 6) It seems like the smaller blades & the smaller bottle might do a better job of chopping things into very tiny, drinkable pieces, compared to a full size blender. 7) You actually do not even need to push any buttons so it's a more efficient process. 8) The bottle is the portion size you need for one smoothie so you do not need to calculate how much liquid to add. 9) The bottles fit in a dishwasher just like cups, instead of finding a bigger spot like you would need to with the full size blender. 10) You don't spill between the bigger container and the glass you are pouring it into. (I am really bad at that part.)This is my new, "OMG, you should totally buy this!" purchase so feel free to ask any questions about it.P.S. In case you are wondering, the lids do have a little bit of color on them that is the same as the bottle color. So if you are getting extra bottles,